Stories of the Olympic Games: Gymnastics
Series exploring the history of the modern Olympics through the stories of athletes, here looking at the never-ending pursuit of technical perfection by gymnasts.
Daring and danger, skill and beauty combine as this series telling the history of the Olympics continues with the story of gymnastics at the modern Games.
It explores a never-ending pursuit of perfection by athletes constantly pushing their sport to greater and greater levels of technical difficulty, both on the floor and up on the high apparatus. Like Olga Korbut, who transformed gymnastics with revolutionary new routines that risked everything in Munich in 1972; and Nadia Comaneci, who picked up the baton and went one further by scoring the first perfect ten out of ten in an Olympics at Montreal in 1976.
Faster, Higher, Stronger is full of dramatic incident as well as great gymnastic elegance and achievement. One of the most inventive Olympic gymnasts, Vera Caslavska, re-lives the protest she made at the Soviet invasion of her country Czechoslovakia during the 1968 Mexico Games, and Japanese athlete Shun Fujimoto recounts the extraordinary story of how he competed with a broken knee to ensure his team won gold.
Last on
Music Played
Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes
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Marconi Union
Sleepless
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Max Richter
A sudden Manhattan of the mind
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Ashley Sewell
All Alone
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John Williams
Gone Forever
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Max Richter
Arboretum
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Max Richter
Vladimir's Blues
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Marconi Union
Interiors
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Marconi Union
Debris
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Adante from Piano concerto 21 'Elvira Madigan'
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Einst眉rzende Neubauten
Wuste
Credits
| Role | Contributor |
|---|---|
| Narrator | Adrian Lester |
| Narrator | Adrian Lester |
| Series Producer | Alastair Laurence |
| Series Producer | Alastair Laurence |
| Director | Alastair Laurence |
| Director | Alastair Laurence |
The Olympians who went faster, higher and stronger
Take a look at the sports people who pushed the limits of human endeavour.